Mag-Wind New Wind Turbine [Video]

[Ed. note – video removed by owner]

Jay Leno’s all about the green tech, I mean, his garage is running on wind and solar, and it powers approximately two-thirds of the place. So recently, he just put up this video demonstrating a new technology for rooftop wind applications. The Mag-Wind turbine is made by Enviro Energies and both Jay Leno and Ed Begley Jr. have their own versions on order. Naturally, Leno was excited to point out that his turbine will be bigger than Begley’s, but in addition to that, you’ll get an idea from the video how interesting the technology actually is. It’s built using magnetic levitation technology that reduces friction, noise, vibration, and energy loss. Some other interesting aspects of the Mag-Wind System include:

Expert, I certainly understand where you’re coming from, but (1) your article is a year and half old, (2) I can’t tell if the technology is the same as it was when you described it, and (3) let’s see how Jay Leno and Ed Begley Jr. like it because they’re going to be testing it out. Let’s hope the results are good.

the dragon fly looks expensive and I saw no picture of even a prototype and still looks like it is has to be mounted into a prevailing wind and only 1 direction. Where this Maglev unit looks like the best technology is addressing gravity and friction, plus it will operate with any wind direction and generate at any wind speed. It shows more power for it’s size than anything I have seen. It ain’t pretty but what wind mill is.

There is a similar design from some people In Massachusetts called FloDesign, you can review there design as they took down there singular web site recently. But, the main site is still up, you will understand once you visit this site: http://www.flodesign.org/

FloDesign is a beautiful design, I was really impressed until I saw the same problems that plague all the current wind turbines… they all have a speed limit! Ironically they are not designed to handle anything faster then 55mph. While it true you rarely have days like that but in storm winds.. above 55 you have to shut it down… or it will break. In a level 3 Hurricane all of the current designs will be destroyed – leaving us with out power again. Dragonfly is designed to handle speeds of 300 mph or more, just like any Jet Engine. So which one would you rather have? Something that works in a narrow window of wind operation 8 – 55mph or something that just works? I really like FloDesign from MIT they almost got it right. This design further proves how much better Dragonfly will be as a shrouded turbine delivering 4 times the energy, as they have discovered. As for Dragonfly’s prototype – its coming soon and much more… check out the new “Blog Logs” at Dragonfly-WindTurbine.com. You’ll see there is much more to it then just some pretty pictures.

If by “much more” you mean renderings AND hyperbole, then I agree. Please don’t think that Dragonfly is the first wind company to use Solidworks or CFD….you couldn’t be more mistaken.

Here we go again…..The same spurious claims, the same lack of data, the same allegations regarding existing designs, the same unproven “superiority” of new designs….this business never changes.

For those of you that are not conversant in wind turbine technology, this can all seem pretty daunting. It appears that everyone is looking for that technological “silver bullet” to vastly improve the way we extract energy from the wind, and as a result they will buy into almost any pseudoscientific explanation about why some “unique” design is SOOOOOO much better than traditional designs.

Here are the facts: Vertical, drag-based machines have been tried…no improvement compared to traditional machines. Shrouded machines have been tried….no improvement compared to traditional machines. There are a myriad of designs out there, and the frank fact of the matter is that most of them are bad. The one and only thing that can prove the worth of a given design is energy production over time…nothing…NOTHING else means diddly squat.

There is a reason that 99% of the wind turbines in the world are three-bladed, horizontal-axis, upwind machines, and it sure as hell isn’t because the thousands of engineers employed by this industry are ALL collectively unable to “think outside the box”…the fact of the matter is that it’s a pretty darned good box.

Show me a verifiable power curve and point me to end users with data collection capabilities, and I will listen…make unfounded claims based upon pretty computer renderings, and I’ll put you in the same group as I do the folks from Magwind…full of hot air.

It’s nothing personal, Phillip — It just gets my goat to see outlandish claims from people that don’t have a single bird in the air. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect you to be able to back up your hype with a bit of actual field data, do you? You appear to be putting the marketing cart before the generating horse, so to speak.

ah I see MagWind is rearing its ugly head again. These ppl are the masters of deception..or at least BS. Here’s a quote for ya’all:

“It will turn, it will produce electricity, but the claims are exaggerated,” the former executive director of the Ontario Sustainable Energy Association told The Standard in an interview. “Unless they’ve discovered some new physical feature of the atmosphere that no one has understood before now, the amount of wind that pyramid will capture is limited.”

At last! Hi-tech wind power for everybody! Now: Using super-insulation and smaller dwellings, and a huge life-style shift, can we live, just as happy, just as productive, on much, much less? I think so! Super-insulation, LED technologies, Microwave cooking sciences, and a host of other scientific advances including solar powered Einstein cycle refrigeration can cut down the energy required for survival to a point, as proven by off-gridders, that we can be independent from, or even sell back electric power to the grid! A new American life-style is born! Sustainable and rewarding, and the wasteful ways of the past slide away with every remediation program, and the future gets brighter with every new advance in technology! Next: Solar powered computers. then Solar powered cell phone systems without all the wire of the old days! We move into the 21st Century with heads held high, save for our deplorable education system, but we can fix this too!

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